Beloved business professor dies

Aug. 23, 2004

By AMANDA HICKS, copy editor

Management professor Robert B. Jones died July 13 at the age of 52. Teaching from personal experience and utilizing what he called "war stories" in his lectures, Jones encouraged students to be inventive and relentless.

Jones

Business students appreciated Jones' teaching style and interesting class sessions. He received the Collins Outstanding Professor award in 2002 and presented the lecture "Teaching: The Challenge of Developing Tomorrow's Leaders Today." He said he considered the award "the greatest honor."

He was given the Alpha Kappa Psi Outstanding Professor award in 1997 and the Teaching Excellence Award for Non-Tenured Faculty in 1994.

Jones earned his bachelor of arts and bachelor of science degrees from the College of Idaho and his MBA at Baylor in 1976. He used examples from his first career as an entrepreneur to show students that they could succeed.

In 1980, he took over his father's business, a Denver distributorship for Evinrude motors and Chris-Craft boats that served 13 states. He sold the business to a Fortune 500 company and moved to Texas in the early 1990s. Among the reasons he chose to leave Denver, Jones cited the fact that his parents moved to Texas and that he was tired of being cold.

Jones joined the Hankamer School of Business faculty in 1992 and served on its Advisory Board from 1984 to 1990. He also served on the advisory board of the Small Business Institute from 1987 to 1990.

Jones' children, John Louis Jones of Arlington and Jennifer Leigh Jones of San Francisco, and his wife, Patty Ortiz Jones, are Baylor graduates. John graduated in 2001 with an English degree, and Jennifer graduated in May with an art degree. He is also survived by two sisters, Victoria Josslin of Bainbridge, Wash., and Elizabeth Medes of Emmett, Idaho; a brother, Mark Jones of Meridian, Idaho; and his mother, Bernice Jones of Emmett, Idaho.

Matt Keepers, a 2002 Baylor alumnus, said Jones helped him when his team was having trouble with a consulting project.

"He was very candid and open," Keepers said. "You never caught Bob in a bad mood. He used his experiences to show us what we needed to do. There are a lot of generous people, but not a lot of people like Bob."

Students may submit quotes about Jones' impact at www.bayloralumni.com.